m.
'Holy Mother, preserve us!
It is not a Christian name.'

"She opened her hands and clasped them again,
And the infant in the cradle
Set up a cry, a lusty cry,
As loud as he was able.

"'Holy Mother, preserve us!'
The Queen her prayer renewed,
When in came a moth at the window,
And fluttered about St. Jude.

"St. James had fallen in the socket,
But as yet the flame is not out,
And St. Jude hath singed the silly moth,
That flutters so idly about.

"And before the flame and the molten wax,
That silly moth could kill,
It hath beat out St. Jude with its wings,
But St. James is burning still.

"Oh, that was a joy for Queen Mary's heart,
The babe is christened James,
The Prince of Aragon hath got,
The best of all good names.

"Glory to Santiago,
The mighty one in war,
James he is called, and he shall be
King James the Conqueror.

"Now shall the Crescent wane,
The Cross be set on high,
In triumph upon many a mosque,
Woe, woe to Mawmetry!"

So Jayme the youth was named, Jayme being the popularly accepted
Aragonese form for James, and early in life he entered upon an active
career which soon showed him to possess a strong and crafty nature,
though he was at the same time brutal, rough, and dissolute. In his
various schemes for conquest and national expansion, he stopped at
nothing which might ensure the success of his undertakings, and in
particular did he attempt by matrimonial ventures of various kinds to
increase his already large domain. This rather unusual disregard of the
sacredness of the marriage relation, even for that time, may have been
induced to some extent by the atmosphere in which he passed his youthful
days; for his mother, the devout Queen Maria, in spite of all her pious
zeal for the Church, was pleasure-loving, and in the excitement of court
life it was whispered that she had looked with favor more than once
upon some gallant troubadour from Provence who had written verses in her
honor. Jayme's first marriage was with Eleanor of Castile, Berenguela's
sister, but when he discovered that the young Castilian king, Fernando,
was strong and capable and that there was no possibility whatever of an
ultimate union of Aragon and Castile, at least within his own time, he
promptly divorced Eleanor, and then wedded Yolande, the daughter of King
Andrew